Married While Sleeping
by Raynidreams
Summary: Kara and Leoben are married at the time of the fall. A drabble and a scene.
1. Chapter 1

The first chapter is a ficlet I wrote off a prompt. The second and third are a more fully fledged fics. None are beta read, so I apologise for any errors.

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She heard the Commander's speech from inside the cell. It made her think about regret. It made her think about _him_. And, when she heard the battle claxons sound, that emotional fist sank even deeper into her stomach; pummeling her mind and heart. There was no changing it now.

_They made love frantically, then afterwards she twisted onto her side giving him her back, feigning sleep. It wouldn't shut him up forever, but at least for this evening he may give it a rest._

She ran up to CIC; her face the cocky mask. The face she'd tormented the XO with only hours before to cover for her own marriage being in such a state. _Pilots climbing the walls... Gods,_ it was what she'd been doing with him for months.

_Kara, you need to get help! You need to talk to me or you need to put it all behind you, for it's not what is important. What you do in the future is. _His words were cut off due to her surprise fist to his jaw. Then her breath was knocked out of her as he slammed her back against the wall. Clothing to be ripped off and left hanging in their haste. Savage moments later and he was in her. In this she had always known the best attack and defense. He continued to whisper to her as he pushed. She thrust back not listening.

The blood of the first Raider tattooed across her screen. She blinked to clear the blinding light of the explosion from her eyes. To clear the tears. _Oh, gods… Oh, gods…_

_When you get back from duty, we're going to really talk this time. I want a proper marriage with you. I want us to have a perfect home and children - babies not clouded by the shadow of your mother or my childhood. I want a real home and not that wretched place we shared and still share, even here._ (She'd turned away.) _Kara? Kara? Just talk to me? Please?_

The door slammed behind her in time to her next kill. The tears to work their way down her cheeks no matter how many times she blinked.


	2. Chapter 2

Adama had only seen her husband once and at a distance and so he hadn't been sure. He warned her to be prepared though, just in case. But she'd refused to believe him, not until she saw the body for herself, and when she did, she froze - to feel like she had at the first of the horrifying reports: numb and then howling inside with silent pain. A moment in which all of her memories of him were ripped apart and where each day of their marriage was instantly tainted by the sight of the dead cylon. _Gods,_ she thought, _all the plans he'd had?_ (All those she'd tried to run from.) _But, no, he couldn't possibly be? He'd been with her wholly and completely. In heart and in body. _And then she remembered - the security clearance and the promotion he'd gotten at the base - it had been down to her. He wasn't Caprican, and so she'd pulled in a favour for her new lover. The betrayal over it now burnt harshly within. She felt sick. Kara to wonder what he'd done or infiltrated while he'd been there. How many had he killed? Awake it haunted her just how much it was her fault. That night, and finally exhausted, she panted from twisted dreams about their time together.

Weeks later and the call came through about the _Gemenon Traveller. _She heard it and told herself it couldn't be _him _come back. It couldn't be… there were many copies – this had been whispered over-and-over many times since the tales of humanlike machines had begun. Rumours spreading faster than sickness throughout the battlestar. Yet even so, at the alarm, Kara had demanded and then begged to be assigned the mission, wanting to make sure; insisting that if anyone would have a handle on his model, it would be her. The Admiral had denied her request. Replied that if anyone would have a handle on her, it would be _him_. In the end the XO had gone. The Colonel to torture and humiliate him for hours. She waited these out in violent frustration, unable to get past it. Unable to picture him as anything other than her lover. _Her husband._ Battered by images of his sleepy and satisfied face as they lay in bed together. His hands cupping her breasts drowsily. The worship seemingly within him as he'd licked the traces of himself from off the inside of her thighs. All these sensual recollections coming back to her along with his ever loving looks in the mornings when he'd greeted her with a wide smile and the promise of breakfast.

_She needed to see it. Him._

She shot out with the CAP, and against all orders, landed aboard the _Gemenon Traveller,_where inside the civilian vessel, she pulled a gun on the marines who tried to prevent her from going to him. No one was going to stop her.

Yet when she got to the room, she halted unsure. _What if it was him?_ She bit her lip and entered. Within, the smell of sweat was potent. It was a sourer version of the scent he used to leave on her skin at night. She trembled at the display of his naked body bound to a chair. It was a match for the corpse. It looked like her husband's. _It was him_, she just knew. She then noticed the bruises on this chest and the pain in his face and it only made her tremors get worse. It made her gun hand shake. Tigh stood up at her entrance and demanded to know what she was doing there. Still shivering, she ordered him to leave. Saul glared at her but only stomped to the side of the room to watch.

The way between them now cleared, she didn't know what to say. The flood of memories threatened to swamp her once more. She cocked the weapon and aimed it at him, honestly not knowing if it was for herself or for him that she did. He smiled and nodded. She wanted him to beg. She wanted him to explain. She wanted anything but the passive acceptance he offered her.

_Why?_ she asked him. Her voice sounded too loud in the over lit and stench filled room.

_It doesn't matter now_, he replied. His voice raw from hours of choking and talking about nothing.

_Did you pick me? Was I part of the plan? _

He stared deep into her eyes_. I don't remember the plan. I only remember you. I went to sleep in our apartment and then awoke aboard the ship. It was only then that I knew what I was. What I was but not what I'd done. _He offered her this in a quiet voice and with no excuses. His face appeared as broken as she felt. It was the face that he gave her after she hit him. It was the face that she'd got given when she didn't come home on shore leave. It was the crushed expression he'd been unable to hide after she'd told him that she didn't want children and that if he'd have wanted that, he should have married someone else. A molding of features which had become symbolic to her of her guilt just as her mother's always was of her unworthiness to have love.

Saul spoke to her again then and it broke their regard. She told the older man that she would finish this. He took one look at the cylon's face - at the exposure so deeply evident there - and nodded, resigned. Saul concluding that Starbuck, _the frak up that she was_, was made of harder metal than even he'd thought if she could do this. He went outside and when the door sounded closed behind him Kara slumped and the gun fell. Leoben's head dropped in tandem with hers. Trembling, they both paused and absorbed the ghost of the other.

After a moment, she walked over to the trolley be his side. She selected the pliers and came closer. Her pain was raw and deep and it needed an outlet. _My human brain is struggling with this, but as far as I understand, when you die, you get transferred to somewhere else? _The words were spiteful but her tone was anything but.

His breath upped a little and he gave off a sobbing laugh. _ I don't know. I honestly, don't know. I just know what I am. _

_I've heard that if you die, you get a new body… if that's so, then none of what I am about to do will last._

_No, _he croaked. _But none of what we did before will have been with this flesh either. Our love... the tiny spec of life we lost._

Tears blinded her as Kara placed the tool around his ring finger. The gold band already there gleamed more brightly than the chrome of the pliers. _You told Tigh that there was a nuke. Where is it?_

_I told him that to play for time and you know it. Once they found me, I knew that I had to get to see you once more before whatever happens from now on in… does._

Kara's breath came in shuddered gasps. His matched hers. _How many cylons are there aboard the fleet?_

He stretched his finger out straight, his lips close. _I love you,_ he whispered. She memorised the creases of his jaw and face, and then, after a sob, squeezed. He screamed.

Sometime later, she put the pliers down. _I said to everyone that if I ever saw you again, I'd put a bullet in your brain, _she revealed as she released him from the ties and he fell to the soaking wet floor. She dropped to her knees and pulled him into her lap. She couldn't do this anymore.

_Kara, I... I don't know what comes after this and I'm scared,_he gasped and curled around her legs weakly. She ran her hand down his back from shoulder to tail to soothe them both. She then wiped the tears and blood from off his face.

_I know._ _Me too, _she said back, before she picked up the gun.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: This whole fic was prompted by deborah_judge. She latterly asked to actually see their marriage. This chapter is that.

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They got married off a whim, or so it seemed to her when they spoke the words. A week together away and they'd enjoyed the beautiful sunsets, the rocky beaches and the allure of the tiny galleries lying beyond the arched stone doorways littering the city's rock walls. Dusty caves filled with idols and hand-carved goods loaded onto spice infused shelves. Hand in hand, they'd browsed these and the market stalls for hours, and then in the evening, returned to kiss and make love in their whitewashed villa before falling into a heavy sleep. The beauty of the place and how she felt at being there seemed unreal to her at times, almost as though she was a different person. An altered and totally new Kara that had been born in the moment they arrived and one cast in further with each tranquil moment. A Kara who was with him completely, and one who didn't say no or run when he asked.

It happened early evening on their last day. Sun hazed and drink emboldened, they discovered a civil office, one cool inside with simple bland furnishings and a stilted officiate with a distant smile and perfectly sounded out vowels. Outside of it, when he'd dared her in with a grin, she'd thought he was joking; messing about right up until the moment when they signed the papers. Her hand had shaken when she laid down the pen. Back outside, and the air breathed thinner. The glare of the red evening sunlight too bright in her eyes from where it bounced off the waves. It was only then that she grasped how he might have planned this all along. The thought working its way to the surface like a hindered bubble of air which popped with a silent whisper of accusation. He kissed her frozen face, long and slow. His tongue tracing her lips as his hands sculpted her back and rear; hers flattened against his chest where his warmth burned through his skin and white shirt. He kissed her at the same time as he told her how much he loved her, then stepped her backwards, and pressed her up against a faceless god's shrine. The carved male statue stabbed into her hips, just as he captured her from the front. His passion melting her stillness until she returned his kisses with frantic need.

Later, he led them to a restaurant for a celebration dinner where she took small bites of food which tasted too sweet and that after only a few, left her feeling over full, the pressure stretching the skin of her stomach uncomfortably. It only added to how strange she felt. _We did it_, she thought as she paused, _we got married._After months of them living together, with her finding herself more and more used to him, a sentiment which she'd steadfastly ignored, it was done. The deep inhalation didn't help, and she sat there not shut down, but feeling jittery, as if words were massive creatures she was forcing out from between her lips when she replied to his questions and observations. He caught the look and understood it.

_Kara, the greatest prisons are the ones we make in our minds. People shape these but we as individuals uphold them. You broke out of one of yours today by letting me in. You have no idea how much I value that trust._

It stabbed her in the belly to hear it, but the truth of his words felt real. He filled up her glass with water then drew her attention to the waves. White lines cut through with purple to make billions of conversations strike as they hit the pebbled shore. It's sounded ageless. Listening, she picked up her fork, and began again to eat the delicate shellfish. The over sweetness she'd tasted in the crustaceans before lessened as she calmed down, it now undercut with a saltiness that split the flavour into perfection. Into something she could subtly detect and one all at once deftly balanced with the other things on her plate. He offered her a taste of the fruit sauce from off his own dish. It added its own complement to the dance on her tongue and she smiled at him.

Across from her, he flashed her back a bright grin, his face flushed and animated when he saw her relax. It shook her to the core to see how happy she made him. He knew what she was. He'd met her at her worst, and yet he loved her. She took his hand and looked at it intently - they wore no rings, and she couldn't see them ever doing so, though the day before, a market woman had painted pretty henna designs across her fingers and his. The dark lines swirled and interlocked as she clasped his hand. It looked like a band, but it was one which would fade. It made her think of the ceremony. They'd been no blessing by the gods. He worshipped differently from her, she knew. He'd once said that temples and figures were graves to dead ideas and that the spirit was all around him. She wondered if he'd called to the gods silently as he'd spoken her name? She'd not prayed. Without analysing it, she'd easily spoken her name and then his as their wrists were tied with a flimsy cord. The civil words and papers that followed just as easy to complete. And as she sat and ate with him, she realised then that perhaps her unquestioning agreement had been because no gods had branded their marriage with a permanence. She had no qualms about breaking human laws. This acknowledgement made it easier as she drank symbolically from his glass, and he hers at the end of the meal - a nod back to a more an older tradition of marriage; one of slightly more ceremonial significance.

As they walked along the beach afterwards, their ankles dragged at by the undertow the further they strode out, she wondered if she was actually even going to break these vows. She felt his arm around her back. It was a little too tight, but she could loosen it. It didn't feel a threat, not like how much he loved her did. Or, if she was honest, how much - she shivered to admit - him. He pulled her closer and whispered how he loved her too as if he'd heard. He eased his lips over her ear, and carried on to say that this was a beginning for them, that they were on the right path. Kara looked back to their footsteps in the sand. To where his sometimes engulfed hers and hers had crushed the outlines of his. Then further on to where the water washed everything away like deluges could shatter stone walls.

He followed her gaze. _It's like seeing the foreshadowing of each moment in watching them come, knowing they're going to devour where we've walked._

Kara shivered again at seeing the patterns dissolve, then pulled Leoben in closer. Tomorrow they would return home together, married. A wave hit their feet, and they fell down under the pressure, and laughed.


End file.
